Only two payphones survive at the Grand Central subway station in New York. Neither one works. As recently as a few months ago there were 7 or 8 public phones in that station. None of them had worked since at least January. Penn Station and the shuttle-connected Times Square and Port Authority subway stations have working payphones, but for some reason Grand Central has none.

Within the last couple of months the number of working public telephones at the Grand Central subway station was whittled down to 2. Here is one of them, by an escalator to the 7 train on the left, and stairs to the 4/5/6 trains on the right.

An absence of payphones here would be unfortunate for those who assume that busy transit hubs are among the few places one can still expect to find working payphones.

It would be unfortunate for me for different reasons. This phone in particular sits in direct proximity to a space where subway buskers and musicians perform. I have recorded and shared their sounds through this payphone many many times. This phone’s demise could mean the beginning of the end for that little project, which over the years has funneled some intriguing sounds through the rugged, monochrome sound of the landline.

Here is a little bit of the Yaz Band, an act frequently heard in the city subways, as recorded through this very payphone 5 months ago.

I will genuinely miss the reliable, rugged sound of the landline, especially as heard through public pay telephones. Music and sounds from the streetscape seem more mysterious when heard this way. The handicap of hearing music through a primitive conduit lends sympathy to the experience.

What would Marshall McLuhan think?

This and the one other remaining payphone in the Grand Central subway station are owned by Pacific Telemanagement Services (PTS), the nation’s largest payphone service provider. PTS also owns a significant quantity of payphones upstairs from the subway station, in Grand Central Terminal. Those phones all seem to work and are actively maintained. The same is true of the dwindling number of payphones at the Times Square subway station, which I have also used to capture sounds of subway musicians.

PTS has not given up on its subway payphones altogether. Maybe that signals a reprieve for the two remaining phones at the Grand Central subway station.

Or maybe they will just hang in state for eternity.